Institutional religion, especially the fundamental, evangelical and the
charismatic groups, have done a excellent job at keeping its followers
preoccupied with the thing that in God's eye's is no longer the thing...God has
dealt with the thing...sin...through the cross, once and for all. To remain
ignorant of the thing that God wants believers to be occupied with...the life of
Christ within and living that life...is paramount to keeping people "sin
conscious", "hell conscious" and heaven conscious rather than "God conscious",
"Kingdom conscious", "love conscious and "Grace conscious."
Religion has
minimized what Jesus accomplished on the cross by preaching a law-keeping,
fear-mongering gospel instead of maximizing what Jesus accomplished on the cross
by preaching a love-giving and grace-living gospel.
The Gospel of Jesus
Christ is not the bad news of sin, which brought death to all mankind...the
Gospel is the good news of the resurrection...the restoration of life to to the
"walking spiritually dead" by His dealing with the sin issue (death) once and
for all. The Good News Gospel is a celebration of the purpose and meaning of
what Jesus accomplished by His death and resurrection.
Prior to the cross
man had a sin issue. This sin issue made people impossible to be the dwelling
place of God because of sin pollution, therefore God dealt with the sin issue
"once and for all" so that Christ could dwell in us, making us the habitation of
God. He sterilized us so sin would not pollute us even when we commit
sin.
So God cleaned up the sin pollution issue through the
cross...sterilized us...filled us through Christ's resurrection...now He has to
have a way of keeping us sterile in a sin polluted environment by sealing us so
we would not be contaminated by sin. As the dwelling place of God people need to
be sealed to keep the bad things from contaminating us as the container of the
divine life of Christ.
How did God accomplish this? "And you also were
included in Christ when you heard the
word of truth,he gospel of your
salvation. Having believed, you were marked in Him with a SEAL, the promised
Holy Spirit." (Eph. 1:13)
The wonderment of the Gospel is that Christ did
it all without any input by man...He cleansed us through the cross, He filled us
through the resurrection and He sealed us by giving us the Holy
Spirit.
Wow...what a loving Father that would give us such a loving
Savior who sent us such a loving Holy Spirit to ensure we would be the living
stones, fitted together by Christ Himself, to make us His dwelling place...His
"called out ones"...His Community of the Redeemed, to represent Himself in the
Community of Humanity.
Yet we have religion polluting the purity of the
Gospel of Grace by mixing it with the Mosaic law, religious tradition and
religious rule keeping. Such injustice to the gospel is due to ignorance of the
totality and finality of what happened on the cross, and is uncalled for.
- Glenn Regular
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